At every gasping breath he took his mother gasped too. She was sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed, stiffly erect; she had sat like that the whole night. Her piercing eyes with their terrified expression flew to the doctors' grave faces, and then stared past them into space. There they stood, to the right and to the left--but there, there!--did they not see it?--there at the head of the bed stood Death! She started up with an inarticulate sound, then sank down again as though broken in spirit. The doctors had given the child, who was so dangerously ill, an injection; his heart was very weak, which made them fear the worst. Then the authority took leave: "I'll come again to-morrow"--but a shrug of the shoulders and a "Who knows?" lay in that "I'll come again to-morrow." The family doctor was still there; he could not leave them, as he was their friend. Kate had clung to him: "Help! Help my child!" Now he was sitting with Paul Schlieben downstairs in his study; Kate had wished to remain alone with the sick boy, she only wanted to know that he was near. The two men sat in silence with a glass of strong wine before them. "Drink, do drink, my dear friend," Paul Schlieben had said to the doctor; but he did not drink himself. How will she stand it, how will she stand it? That buzzed in his head the whole time. He was wrapped in thought, and there were deep lines on his forehead. And the doctor did not disturb him. Kate was on her knees upstairs. She had sunk down in front of the chair in which she had watched through all those anxious nights, and was holding her hands pressed against her upturned face. She was seeking the God on high who had once upon a time laid the child so benignantly in her path, and was now going to cruelly tear it away from her again. She cried to God in her heart. "O God, O God, don't take him from me. Thou must not take him from me. I have nothing else in the world beside him. God, God!" Her surroundings, all her other possessions--also her husband--were forgotten. She had only the child now. That one child that was so dear, so good, so clever, so excellent, so obedient, so beautiful, so charming, so extremely lovable, that had made her life so happy, so rich that she would be poor, poor as a beggar were he to leave her. "Woelfchen, my Woelfchen!" How dear he had always, always been; so entirely her child. She did not remember anything more about the tears she had shed on his account; if she had ever shed any, they had been tears of joy, yes, only tears of joy. No, she could not do without him.